


as I was before, I am now left to be

by jayburding



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Victor Nikiforov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-10-11 09:08:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10461162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/jayburding
Summary: When Viktor was young, Mama held his hand on the ice so he wouldn’t fall. Papa skated ahead and urged him on when he tried to follow, until he was just as steady, just as fast, until he was past them both and still gaining momentum.They cheer from the rink side, and then from home when he travels further and further away, always skating, always looking ahead. They are proud of him, they say. So proud.Until he finds what it takes to make them stop.





	1. Chapter 1

He kisses a boy at his second Junior competition, after the short programme finishes with Viktor in seventh, higher than he’s ever ranked before. Frederique, older by a year and currently in fourth, says that he’s beautiful and asks permission before he takes Viktor’s hand, trembles as he leans in. It’s awkward, Viktor’s never done this before and Frederique probably hasn’t either, but Viktor’s heart flutters in his chest so hard as they part that Viktor has to pull him back to try again. Tatyana does say that nothing improves without practice. She’s right yet again.

Their coaches come looking soon enough and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on. Even if the kissed red mouths didn’t betray them, Viktor’s giddy happiness and Frederique’s lingering nerves give them away. Tatyana scolds him about distractions as they walk away, but she’s smiling too much for it to be much of a rebuke.

The next day Viktor skates a clean programme in the free skate and climbs to fifth, setting a new PB in the process. It feels like flying, to be so high up. Frederique misses the podium after an under-rotated triple toe and a fall on the flip.

After the medal ceremony- one of Viktor’s countrymen took gold, silver went to Germany, bronze to Japan- he catches up to Frederique to congratulate him, and ends up hugging him while the other boy cries. He can’t imagine ever getting so caught up that it would hurt him this much to miss the podium, but then even from the heady heights of fifth the podium is still far off.

They kiss again at the banquet, less nervous than before, and Frederique says he’s beautiful, touches Viktor’s long hair like it’s actual silver. Viktor cannot stop smiling when Frederique takes his hand and doesn’t let go until they have to leave. In the morning they meet in the lobby, ready to head home, and exchange numbers on scraps of paper and promises to call soon. Viktor has to leave first and Frederique waves him off as the taxi pulls away, Viktor watching through the window until he’s out of sight.

On the plane, Tatyana humours his romantic chatter without shooting him down, though she suggests that perhaps he should talk to Frederique a little more before he starts considering what dog they will have when they live together. After dinner she dozes off, or pretends to at least, she might be bored of hearing about Frederique by now, and Viktor stares out of the window instead, too giddy to sleep.

-

At home, he tells his parents everything, like he always does.

It never occurs to him to be afraid to tell them about Frederique.

-

When he’s finally allowed to go to his room he can hear his mobile ringing in his bag. He digs it out and doesn’t recognise the number, but he knows it will match the scrap of paper in the pocket of his uniform jacket. If he answers, Frederique will probably be sweet and nervous at the other end, and he’ll want to smile but he knows he’ll cry, and when Frederique asks what’s wrong-

The phone rings twelve more times before it finally goes silent.

He doesn’t cry, but he lies there in the dark, phone clutched to his chest like it will fill the void that’s opened there, until he falls asleep.

He parts ways with Tatyana without seeing her again. Viktor goes to the rink and practises alone during his usual session times, and though he feels so heavy the jumps are impossible he still stays until the rink closes. What would have been his second qualifier for the JGPF comes and goes without him. From fifth he had little chance to make it to the Final even if he won gold, but he wanted to try. Instead he finds the notice of his own withdrawal from the Junior Grand Prix in a drawer in the kitchen, too deliberate to be an accident, and tucks it away again as if he never did.

Things at home are not as they once were. Papa acts like nothing is wrong despite how distant he is, while Mama frets and retreats by turns. Viktor does what he’s told and retreats to his room the moment he’s free to do so. Keeps his hair tied back and tucked away so he won’t be asked to cut it again. Finds more and more ways to fill the hours in a day with spins and footwork, blades and ice, something he still has some control over, even if a letter has already disproved that.

Viktor never calls Frederique, couldn’t now that his phone has been taken away and his landline calls are supervised. He doesn’t even remember until months down the line and by then he doesn’t know what he did with the scrap of paper he held onto so tightly. It’s another regret he adds to the collection he’s accumulated. There will be more.

He’s introduced to his new coach three weeks after the JGPF he never had a chance to attend, after the stilted birthday celebrations he never wants to repeat. His father warns him to behave. Viktor isn’t sure what he means by it, though he has a grim inkling he’ll find out when he puts the first foot wrong.

Yakov is very different from Tatyana. Much older than her for one, and gruff and grumpy with it. He pushes all of them hard, gives a lot of critique and little praise, and expects only the best. He’s not a tactile person at all, not like Tatyana was, which is probably why Viktor’s parents approached him in the first place.

A midseason change could not be worse timing, and Yakov certainly makes that known. Viktor smiles whether he’s being shouted at or not, and works until his feet blister and then bleed like he always did before, except now he has extra incentive to not be in the house. Yakov thinks it’s his work ethic and what’s another lie really.

At home, he pretends to have correct crushes by thinking of the boys he steals surreptitious glances at and changing their names. Mama smiles when he tells her and encourages him to chase these imaginary people, to be open and honest and see if they feel the same. Every time she does a small part of him shears away.

Papa will nod and say “That’s good”, because looking at girls is something that Viktor needs to learn and practice like his skating in order to be good enough. Viktor used to get a hand on the shoulder, even a hug, when he did well, but Papa doesn’t touch him anymore. This is the best it can be now.

He gets better at the pretence, better at smiling when he’s not happy, if only so Mama won’t keep asking what she did that he turned out this way, what she needs to do to fix it. Viktor doesn’t know what to tell her. He never thought of himself as broken until now.

He gets better at other things too, now that the rink is his sanctuary. Despite the time he spent with no coach, and the bare month he has before nationals, he manages a solid performance. Not podium worthy, but a strong fourth this time, enough to get a “that will do I suppose” from Yakov, the highest praise Viktor’s had yet from him. Next time could be bronze.

Viktor works hard, he always has, but he isn’t perfect, not by a long shot. At the first event of the next season he lets a boy kiss him in Courchevel because Viktor likes his smile, wishes he could still smile like it was effortless. It happens in a quiet corridor of the hotel, brief and furtive, but Viktor cannot relax enough to really enjoy it. Fear is all that makes his heart hammer.

Yakov looks at him like he knows when Viktor slips back into the dining hall. Viktor smiles at him like his heart isn’t dropping beats to maintain its hummingbird pace, and talks to his peers like he’s been there all evening. The other boy sneaks in a little later, but Viktor doesn’t dare look at him while he can feel Yakov’s eyes on him too.

His parents don’t find out about Courchevel, or Montreal, and while Viktor wins a chance to go to the final, Tomáš doesn’t. Safely alone, he wins bronze and hears Yakov whoop from the kiss and cry which he will later deny. They see each other again later at Junior Worlds, but Tomáš is reluctant and Viktor doesn’t press. His parents would be proud of that, and proud of his silver, if only because of the 14 place distance it puts between him and Tomáš, too far to touch.

Viktor spends the offseason forgetting him so he won’t be tempted to try calling without getting caught. He’s allowed his mobile now when he’s out of the house, but he’s sure his parents read everything when he hands it over. It’s not worth the risk when he’s not even certain of an answer.

The next season, he falls again so quietly in Ostrava that not even Yakov notices. Okaya and Gdańsk seal the deal, with a gold apiece and two places in the final. In Malmö, with the door locked, Viktor feels safe enough to enjoy it, however brief it is before the guilt set in. Gold and silver sit together on the dresser, entirely forgotten.

It’s harder to hide back home. He should have been more careful, should have broken things off before it could get this far. But he’s weak, and Alexei, the boy from Ostrava and Malmö, is at nationals because of course he is. They spoke about his training in Moscow while they were learning each other in the public arena, and breathed words in their shared mother tongue into the heated air between them later in private.

Alexei doesn’t think of it, maybe he doesn’t have to think of it the way Viktor does, and so it’s nothing for him to reach for Viktor, touch his shoulder, take his hand, lay a kiss on his cheek like a claim and a request all at once. Viktor is weak. He doesn’t back away when he should, doesn’t run like his mother has tried to teach him. His cheeks warm, and he asks for a proper greeting and cannot begin to regret it when Alexei smiles and dutifully obeys. Regret will come later.

He brings home another gold and his parents don’t notice.

They don’t shout, neither of them, but Mama cries and Papa paces while he mutters things Viktor can only half hear. He doesn’t know how they know, whether Yakov told them or they were watching the coverage and saw something he hadn’t realised he was revealing. Or they simply guessed and his guilt gave him away.

“I thought we’d settled this,” Papa says, like there had been a discussion about it, like something had been agreed rather than Viktor being trapped at the kitchen table until he had apologised for what he’d done.

And what had he done? He’d kissed a boy who kissed him back, and smiled when they held hands. A boy who’d promised to call and waved after the car until he vanished. And now he’s done the same again, touched a boy who could touch him in return without flinching, without fear, and who made him want to smile like he was actually happy.

“You said you were done with this,” Mama ventures, tearful, hopeful. “Those girls you told me about-”

“I lied,” he says before he thinks. If he stops to think he’ll find reasons to tell those lies again, to maintain his parents’ comfortable façade at the expense of himself. He’s not sure he’s aiming for happiness, or even comfort, just space to exist. He hates lying.

“I lied,” he repeats as Mama’s tears spill over. Papa turns on him.

Papa never hits him, but as the argument progresses he raises his hand like he’s thinking about it, and Viktor is afraid. He’s tired of being afraid. So he walks out.

He goes to the rink because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself, practices despite the shaking that hasn’t stopped until they’re closing up for the night. Viktor walks back the way he always does so that no one will wonder, and then circles back on himself before he reaches home.

It’s two hours, maybe three, long enough for his skate bag to make his shoulder ache, before he calls Yakov. Under a streetlamp, so late there’s no traffic on the road, no one out but him, he realises there isn’t anyone else he can call except Yakov, and he almost cries as he listens to the phone ring once, twice, three times, four-

“Viktor?” He must have woken Yakov up. Sleep makes him sound so much softer than usual. “Do you know what time it is?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. He always is, but that doesn’t stop him doing the things he shouldn’t.

He nearly bottles it; nearly apologises again and hangs up without telling Yakov anything. But Yakov will know tomorrow, when he turns up to the rink looking scruffy and cold, or not at all because he spent the night outside and sometimes people in those situations just vanish.

“Viktor, what’s wrong?”

Would it be so bad to vanish?

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s not sure whether for thinking it or not actually doing it. “Can you come get me?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can you come get me?”
> 
> Heavy silence for a second, two, three. Viktor nearly hangs up rather than take the rejection that’s coming.
> 
> “Where are you?”

In stories once you escape the dungeon, the cage, the dark, you never go back. When Yakov pulls up to collect him, in his pyjamas no less, Viktor thinks he’s at that moment in his story, that he’ll get in the car with Yakov and that will be it, he’ll never have to go back. Relieved, he slumps into the passenger seat, only realising how cold he is as the warmth folds over him, shivering as the feeling returns. Yakov doesn’t ask yet, and for that Viktor is grateful.

He meets Yakov’s wife Lilia at the door when she ushers him inside to a bright kitchen. She’s a sharp faced woman but her eyes are kind, the reverse of his mother, and she doesn’t say anything when he balks at sitting at the kitchen table, only leads him through to the living room instead. Lilia is in her pyjamas too, hardly unreasonable at the abysmal hour that Viktor’s chosen to impose upon them, but she still manages to look immaculately put together.

Viktor tells Yakov what happened but he doesn’t use the right words. He says there was an argument, that he’d done something that upset his parents; he says they’d caught him lying and he hadn’t apologised; that he’d walked out but not why.

Yakov looks at him like he doesn’t believe him, Viktor’s used to that expression, but his glance at Lilia is heavy with something Viktor can’t identify.

“You’ll stay here tonight,” Yakov says, like it’s a fact not an option, and Viktor is comforted by that. He’s still not sure if Yakov told his parents or not, but even if he did, Yakov still came out to get him in the middle of the night when Viktor called. He also knows what Viktor is and, whether he accepts it or not, he refrains from using the same words Viktor’s parents do.

Lilia shows him the bathroom and the spare bedroom, already made up for him. He overhears his name twice in the low, hurried conversation taking place in the living room but does them the courtesy of not eavesdropping. It’s the very least he can do (and if he’s had enough of hearing what people think of him this evening, then that’s for no one but him to know).

It only occurs to him as he lays down on the bed, still with his phone in hand, how late it is. He was four hours late getting home from practice when Yakov arrived, five hours now and getting later. His phone hasn’t rung once.

It’s familiar in the worst way, lying in the dark with his phone held so tight the casing creaks. Viktor doesn’t sleep, and the phone never rings. The second time around, he’s not sure how to feel. He’s not sure how to feel about any of it, and the longer he lies there, without sleeping, without his mind ever slowing down, the more uncertain he becomes.

When it’s light again he thinks of slipping out, he thinks of staying for the awkward morning that will ensue, and he wonders which is worse. It’s too quiet for anyone else to be awake, but he’s not sure he wants to wait until they are before he decides. It would only make things more difficult, and he has been difficult enough already.

He treads light as he can as he creeps downstairs, but each creak of the house feels meant to give him away, a deliberate alarm set for the ungrateful houseguest sneaking out as the morning sneaks in.

“Good morning, Viktor,” Lilia says from the kitchen doorway, startling him so badly that he drops his skate bag. She walks even more softly than his mother, and he’s used to counting her steps past his door when she’s looking for signs he's doing things he shouldn’t be.

“Good morning,” he replies, trying to smile. He doesn’t try to excuse himself, it’s obvious what he was trying to do.

Lilia looks at him and does not speak for twenty seconds; he counts them. He wonders if she can see the weakness in him like his parents can, if that’s why she looks for so long without turning away.

“Yakov will be at Yubileyny at the usual time,” she says. Her fierce gaze still doesn’t break away. “I will be at the academy on Rossi Street until late.”

Viktor doesn’t know how to reply. He doesn’t understand what she wants from him. When she finally turns away he feels like he can breathe again.

“Remember to call if you cannot attend practice, and if you will be staying again. Dinner for three is easy enough if I know in advance.”

“I- I will,” he says, scooping up his bag from the floor.

She reaches out to him and he freezes, just long enough for her to place something in his free hand and fold his fingers over it. The sharp corners prick at his skin.

“Just in case,” she says. “Put it somewhere you’ll remember.”

Viktor nods, struck dumb by her hand on his. There’s something dangerous about her warm skin, something blasphemous in the simplicity of this. She shouldn’t be touching him, his parents don’t, and she makes it look so easy too. Like it isn’t something that has to be earned. Maybe his payment has just been deferred until later.

He chokes on his thanks, and doesn’t dare move while she’s still touching him. The second she lets go, he bolts.

Viktor’s halfway down the street before he slows down and opens his hand to see what Lilia’s given him. The tiny square of paper unfolds into a short, neat list: home phone, Yakov’s mobile, Lilia’s mobile, the Yubileyny office and a direct line to Lilia at Vaganova. Everything he could need to contact them if he needed to.

He doesn’t understand why she would do that for him, but he tucks it away like Lilia told him. Somewhere safe. Just in case.

Yubileyny isn’t open to the public this early, but the caretakers know him well enough to let him in. He steps onto the ice like he’s returning after a long absence, coltish for the first few steps before he finds his balance again. Once he has it, he settles back into his skin again, breathes in the cold air and measures the way his lungs expand. This is what he knows, even while the world beyond the rink becomes unfamiliar and unwelcoming.

Viktor skates the programme that won him gold at Nationals just to remember what it felt like, and revels in it as much as he can, even when he fumbles the flip, and lands on his ass when he loses his feet on the triple axel. On his back on the ice, he shivers for a completely different reason as he remembers what followed the free skate, Alexei’s reverent hands on him in the darkness of the hotel room, like he was precious even without the medal that lay across the room.

He wishes Alexei’s number was on the list that Lilia gave him, that he’d been brave enough to ask for it and hidden it well enough that he could add it now. Every time he steps back and they part it feels like it isn’t quite real, that he’s dreamed up something to fill in the spaces of his hopes and Alexei will vanish. Maybe if Viktor had his number, Alexei wouldn’t mind if he called just to check, just to remind himself, assure himself that he didn’t make it up.

The first of the students are arriving. He pulls himself up from the ice and skates figures as they join him and begin to warm up, the white noise of their presence around him leaving his mind buzzing but blissfully empty. Viktor doesn’t see Yakov arrive, only spots him once he’s already rinkside and directing Georgi and Evgeniy through their jump practice. They’re both trying to add the triple axel to their repertoires, though Georgi is having more success.

Viktor remains mostly anonymous during the session and that works for him: his concentration is shot but he knows his feet, his sequences, and the ice has always been able to draw his focus back. Yakov shouts at him like he always does, when he underrotates, when his step sequence slips or he drops a step entirely. It’s reassuring that some things haven’t really changed.

The session comes to reluctant end, and Viktor has to make a decision. He keeps skating, figures again, as the rest filter out. Yakov lets him stay without calling him in, probably out of sheer surprise that Viktor is willingly skating figures. His edges are sloppy, he needs to work on them more.

Eventually he has to stop, and Yakov is waiting for him as he glides to the gate, hands him his guards as he steps off the ice.

“Are you going back?” Yakov asks without preamble.

Viktor pauses for longer than he really needs to before he replies. He already knows the answer.

“Yes.”

Yakov’s expression doesn’t change. He always looks so displeased with everything it’s hard to tell when he actually disapproves.

“Lilia gave you the list?”

“I put it somewhere safe,” he promises.

“Try and call a bit earlier this time,” Yakov grumbles. He still follows Viktor as he collects his gear and heads out of Yubileyny.

“We’ll work on your step sequence tomorrow,” Yakov tells him out on the steps. “It needs tightening up before the European Championships.”

It’s a very Yakov thing to say, but Viktor thinks he understands what Yakov really means.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Yakov.”

Yakov is still watching him as Viktor finally turns the corner and both Yakov and Yubileyny vanish from view.

In stories once you escape the dungeon, the cage, the dark, you never go back. But Viktor walks back in just like he walked out because he never really planned on anything else. Even if Yakov had seemed like a saviour on a dark street by the Neva last night, this is still home, this is still where Viktor is supposed to belong.

It’s not as easy as walking out and never coming back either. Freedom takes more than just running. It's colder than that. There was no plan when he ran out of the house with nothing but his kitbag, and there is no real plan now except the realisation that he needs one. Viktor doesn’t know what comes next, but he does know he needs to prepare, he needs to be ready, because he ran once and he may have to again.

The front door is open, though no one is in evidence as he lets himself in and stands in the kitchen. Everything looks the same, but it feels like it shouldn’t. He can’t explain it, not really. Home is no more unknown than the street after what he did before he left last night; he doesn’t know how things will be here. Something broke last night that he can’t fix, and he doesn’t think he wants to. This is a new unknown, but it can’t be worse than it was before. Can it?

His thoughts of vanishing last night have not themselves vanished, not yet. It scares him how easy it would be to walk out once more and disappear completely.

He goes upstairs and puts his things away like he has every day for eight years. His room should look the same because he has built it into a safe space since he told his parents about Frederique, but it feels wrong. Everything is in its place, so exactly as he left it the day before that he knows his mother has been here, and it makes his skin crawl like it never did before. He wonders if she found what she thought she was looking for.

Downstairs, his mother is hovering in the kitchen like she thinks he won’t see her as he passes by. He stops to look at her, and doesn’t flinch from her eyes on him the way he wants to. Something huge has happened with his walking out, he can feel that now, can see it in the way the façade has fallen apart in so short a time. He’s been gone all night and no one ever called. His mother looks at him now like he scares her, without so much as a hint of the gentleness she used to have. Is this her, or is this what he has made her?

Either way, she made him, and she will have to live with that.

“You’re back,” she says, not surprised or relieved or anything really, just to say it. He lets the silence stretch because he doesn’t know how to answer her, and he’s not willing to help her by giving her something to latch onto.

“I was worried,” she adds abruptly like she’s only just remembered, hands twisted up together so tight the strain bleaches her skin to marble.

The next line in the script should be an apology, and it is, but the line should be hers and he knows she’s waiting for him to read it for her.

“You didn’t call,” he says instead. He watches the expressions that trip over her face, the way her lax mouth pulls in this direction and that while she tries to answer. Viktor’s not sure if that even occurred to her, or if it did and she chose not to.

“Where did you stay last night?”

Viktor thinks of Yakov coming to find him in his pyjamas. Of Lilia waiting at the door, in the night and in the morning, Of the list she folded into his hand and made him promise to keep. Of Yakov watching him until he was out of sight, and promising to see him tomorrow.

“Somewhere safe,” he tells her, and nothing more. Her mouth pulls tight at that.

“Good,” she says like she’s never heard the word out loud before.

“Your father will be home soon.” She says it like a threat.

Viktor doesn’t reply to that. He doesn’t want to think of what his father is going to say that his mother cannot find the courage for. He walks away from her and she lets him, no scolding or cajoling, no nothing as he goes back up the stairs. He closes the door and listens for her light footsteps, but she doesn’t follow him. When he goes to practice she’ll be in here again, turning over every little bit of his life he doesn’t carry with him, like it’s her right.

Tomorrow he could install a lock, he thinks and then wonders how long it would take for his father to break the door down and what the consequences would be. How he would even do it is beyond him when he doesn’t even have his own money. Pocket money isn't something that has ever happened in this house, and he's learned not to ask. If he needs something his parents will buy it for him. According to them he doesn't need a lot of things. 

Tomorrow he’s going to talk to Yakov about money. He doesn’t know where his winnings go at the moment, and he doubts he’ll see any of it again, but the Euros are coming up, and Worlds. If he medals, if he wins, the prize money is enough for an apartment deposit, a few months’ rent; enough to live while he finds other means during the offseason; enough to-

The cascading options fill him with a strange mix of elation and dread, like stepping out into the void the split second before gravity reasserts and you drop. He’s getting ahead of himself too fast, he knows it, but the thought of the power afforded him just by having money in his hand is intoxicating.

_Freedom_ , he thinks, but doesn’t dare to say it out loud.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not safer, if anything it’s worse, but at least he doesn’t have to pretend he’s happy anymore. There’s some freedom in that.

When his father comes home, he has to hand over his phone, has to explain himself, and he doesn’t know what to say. His fear is not a new thing that sent him running out into the dark with little more than his training gear. Their encounter yesterday- how was it only yesterday, it already feels like a lifetime ago- was steel wool scouring the rust off a long-held fear to make it bright again. Yesterday he realised his father could hurt him. Yesterday he realised his mother would allow it.

He doesn’t know how to explain that to them. He tells them he was afraid so he found somewhere safe to stay, which is somehow the truth and yet nothing like it at all.

He sits in that familiar spot at the kitchen table while they loom over him again, tearing his paltry explanations apart and digging through every inch of his phone for evidence of something he cannot put a name to. His mother is triumphant when she sees his call to Yakov. He’s not even sure what her victory is.

“Did you stay with him?” His father asks, and implies so much ugliness in a few words that Viktor cannot stand it.

“I slept in the spare room,” Viktor says, quiet when he wants to scream, wants to beat every word into his father’s horrible assumptions until it pulverises them. “Lilia made it up for me.”

“Coach Yakov’s wife,” his mother says, and shares a look with his father that he cannot begin to read and isn’t sure he wants to. They make everything unwholesome with that look, like he’s made everything dirty by existing.

“I just slept there,” he repeats in the face of their awful implications, and can already see the way they will make euphemisms of it no matter how he words it. The look they both wear says they don’t believe him, and he feels ugly with it.

“Yakov was angry with me for being out so late when I had practice today,” he lies, hoping to salvage it. “Ms Baranovskaya was very gracious about it but she was angry too.”

They don’t look like they believe him, and he doesn’t know why they would. His father snaps that he’s a liar, and he isn’t wrong. Viktor has spent more of the last few years lying than telling the truth, dishonesty drilled into his bones and layered upon itself, lying to himself, lying to them, lying to everyone beyond the front door who doesn’t see the way things work here. He’s just not lying about the right things anymore, not the things they want him to lie about.

He expects he’ll be taken away, like he was with Tatyana. It hadn’t occurred to him when he decided to come back, when he said “I’ll see you tomorrow” to Yakov like it was a certainty rather than a hope, and it should have occurred to him, it should have, because he’s followed the same step sequence to get himself here as he did the first time and he knows what comes next.

They’ll find him someone else who will do the job they want done with him, teach him to skate without anything else, and watch him carefully when he’s out of their reach so that he cannot do anything. Or maybe they won’t, maybe the choreography has changed the second time. Maybe despite everything that’s gone into this, everything he’s accomplished so far, this will be it and skating will be done. He’ll be done, with no other talent or ability to speak of and only this cage of a household to exist in.

He thinks of that slip of paper that he hid so carefully this time, and wonders if the numbers will still work if he’s no longer a skater, no longer a commodity.

“This is your last chance, and you’re lucky you get that.”

It’s an olive branch worded as a threat, unlooked for and unsettling despite the relief that threads through him. At least he knows he can keep his implicit promise to Yakov, but what will he have to pay to keep what he has? Nothing they have given him so far has been without a price.

“We won’t stand for any more of this nonsense,” his father snaps, the weight of his disdain falling on that last word. “If you want to be so ungrateful, you can stay gone next time.”

If that’s all, he needn’t have worried. Viktor already wishes he had.

He doesn’t ask to be excused but rises and returns to his room, and they let him. His mother’s light footsteps outside his door haunt him after he turns the light out.

He takes himself to practice the next day like he always does. No one is there to watch him leave, but he still feels like there are eyes on him as he lets himself out. Yakov is waiting for him where Viktor left him yesterday, and even though Yakov acts like he does every day, seeing him outside on the Yubileyny steps, a speck growing bigger as Viktor approaches, warms Viktor more than he can say.

“You’re on time,” Yakov says, like this isn’t the one thing Viktor is scrupulous about as it gets him out of the house. Maybe he wasn’t sure he’d see Viktor at all. “Will you be staying tonight?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, when he really wants to say yes, though he can’t help but add- “but can I call if that changes?”

Yakov frowns at that, but nods before he leads the way inside.

Practice, as it always has been, remains a reassuring fixed point while the rest of his life fluctuates around him. The ice never changes, not really, only the way he interacts with it, the way he needs it. Today he feels more stable in the air than he ever has with both feet on the ground, leaping and soaring through his jumps.

Until his father appears halfway through.

Viktor leaps into a triple axel and lands to see his father standing rinkside, exchanging words with Yakov. He stumbles but regains his feet without falling, heart hammering in his chest fit to crack his ribs and burst out. This far away he cannot hear what’s being said, and Yakov’s expression gives nothing away. His father looks stern, disapproving, but he can think of very few times his father hasn’t looked that way.

Neither of them look at him, though Viktor’s rinkmates pause in their own practice to look, baffled over the sudden tension. Eventually Yakov directs Viktor’s father away, out of sight of the ice where they can no longer hear the heated discussion but know it continues. Viktor can’t move, though his stomach roils while the rest of him remains frozen.

He can only assume his father leaves because he never comes back into view, and Yakov comes back, yelling at them for laziness when they should be practicing. It takes Viktor a few seconds before he feels he can move, more before he feels he can breathe, but he settles back into the rhythm of practice as best he can, even if he catches himself glancing at the doors more than he should. The nausea doesn’t fade.

Viktor waits for Yakov to talk to him, but when he does it’s only admonishments to tidy his footwork- “Sloppy ankles, Vitya! Fix them!”- or the lukewarm “good” that passes for glowing praise from Yakov.

After the session they talk about plans for the Euros, tweaks to Viktor’s programmes to get the best out of the points he’s aiming for, the free skate particularly, but they don’t discuss his father. Yakov says nothing about the conversation, and doesn’t seem anymore concerned now than he did yesterday to see Viktor go home after practice, so maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Viktor,” he says, like it’s still a certainty, and Viktor loses the nerve he’s been trying to gather to ask him about what was said.

Yakov still walks Viktor out, and still watches him until he turns the corner. It makes him feel a little safer, even if it doesn’t really change anything.

His father doesn’t say anything when he comes home either. He ignores Viktor for the most part, a blessing really after the night before, and Viktor falls back on the familiar standby of retreat to keep the peace. There are eggshells under his feet now even more so than before, but he doesn’t know how to place his feet. The expectations have shifted, and he’s going to find them when they crack. He hopes he doesn’t have to be there long enough to find out what happens then.

It’s only when he gets to his room that he realises he forgot to ask about money like he planned, thrown off by his father’s sudden appearance and the lingering uncertainty as to why. Could he have been asking the same thing? Maybe he predicted that Viktor would ask about that next, it wasn’t a hard guess, and went to make sure that Yakov told Viktor what his father wanted and didn’t give him any ideas? Would Yakov do that?

Viktor shakes it off like the awful thought it is. He’s already past the point of deciding if he trusts Yakov or not, he passed it when he called in the middle of the night. Whether or not he was the one to tell Viktor’s parents about Alexei, he was also the one who came to find Viktor when he called and offered him somewhere to stay. Who offered him somewhere to go next time, because there would be a next time. It’s too late to doubt him now.

Tomorrow. He’ll be sure to ask tomorrow.

Yakov humours him when he remembers to ask, seems to be expecting it, and they sit in the office to talk once practice is over.

It wasn’t a very pleasant conversation. He’d known his plans were optimistic, but as Yakov lays out how everything currently works, the setup, the restrictions, the barriers in his way, he realises exactly how hopeful he had been.

“It’s not as easy as you want it to be,” Yakov tells him, not scolding but very serious.  “Until you’re an adult your winnings go to them. You would need their permission to access them, which I doubt they’ll give.”

Viktor deflates. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but parental permission alone is already an insurmountable task.

Yakov sighs.

“Leave it with me, Vitya. I’ll see what can be done.”

He wants to ask about what his father might have said to Yakov, what Yakov might have said in return, but Yakov is not volunteering the information and Viktor doesn’t want to push it. It’s never led anywhere good to do so.

Whatever Yakov told his father, it seems to have appeased him as much as anything can. Even if he mutters unpleasant things where Viktor can hear him, probably because Viktor can hear him, he accepts what Yakov tell him for the most part. At least, he hasn’t taken Viktor away, and that’s the only measure Viktor really has.

Viktor doesn’t get his phone back. He can’t be trusted, so his father says, so his mother echoes. He expects it really, expects a lot more in fact. Tutors come to the house to allow for the hours he spends training, so the only place he ever really  _needs_  to be is Yubileyny. Viktor waits for them to enforce where he is at all hours, it would seem right if he cannot be trusted, but it doesn’t happen. They fall back into an uneasy version of their previous programme, where his father mostly ignores him and his mother frets and flaps her hands in his periphery.

The differences come with the atmosphere. No longer kept at bay by stories of imaginary crushes and careful submission to their wishes, his parents’ antipathy towards him is all the clearer. When he isn’t stonily silent, Viktor’s father makes sure Viktor know his feelings on the matter. No shouting, no kitchen table, just careless passing remarks thrown like darts. Sometimes they find their mark, sometimes they don’t. His mother agonises over the way his flaw reflects on her, wonders aloud where he can hear her how this could have happened. He never has an answer for her.

The façade has fallen in his house, and while it is not comfortable by any measure, Viktor finds some slim comfort in no longer having to pretend. It’s not safer, if anything it’s worse, but at least he doesn’t have to pretend he’s happy anymore. There’s some freedom in that. He carried the weight of that pretence for years as payment for his parents’ love, but he’s keenly aware now that there was no point to it, that he was paying for something that didn’t exists. It hurts, but he’s lighter for it.

He tries to remember to be kind to himself. He practices with his hair loose like he hasn’t since he split from Tatyana two seasons ago, and blinds himself on every spin without caring. It’s a small freedom he allows himself that would be a big one at home, but he takes his comforts where he can.

“I didn’t realise your hair was that long,” his rinkmate Georgi says, almost awed. He reaches out like he means to brush an errant strand away from Viktor’s face.

Viktor smiles and shies away from Georgi’s raised hand. Yakov has been better to him than he deserves, and it wouldn’t do to repay that kindness by dragging his rinkmates down. Besides, Georgi still talks about his family like they are proud of him, heads home like it is still safe to be there. How could Viktor ruin that for him?

On a rare visit to Yubileyny in the run up to the Euros, Lilia criticises his form and suggests he take up ballet with her if he ever intends to maintain his Ina Bauer, let alone his Biellmann. He accepts it like the compliment it is that Lilia would even bother with trying to teach him, and if it gets him out of the house for an extra couple of hours a day, they don’t talk about it. It’s all business with Lilia, like it is with Yakov, and he appreciates that.

At first she keeps him so late that he has to come back to their house for dinner, and offers up the room that’s still made up for him. He never does stay, he doesn’t have the nerve, and one of them will always offer to drive him home and he always declines that too because he doesn’t know what will happen if they encounter his parents like this, and while it might be nothing, it might not, and he doesn’t want to find out.

He and Lilia develop a language of sorts in never saying anything. Lilia knows what it means if he offers to help cook, if he’s slow in cleaning up after, if he bolts his food or takes his time. In the same way, he learns the minutiae of her expressions, and while she’s never much of one for smiling, he learns the things she does that replaces it. The way she pushes him, the way she will condemn his strength training as insufficient (always within Yakov’s hearing so he’ll grumble) and tweak everything until she is satisfied. He dares to bask in the attention sometimes, and recognises her scolding over his daydreaming for what it is.

With a week to go to the competition, he’s late at the studio again with Lilia, warming down after a long session. Lilia places a plainly wrapped box down beside him as he stretches down to touch the floor, and he rises up with the box in hand.

“What’s this?” he asks, turning it over in his hands. It’s heavy, but it doesn’t rattle at all.

“For your next competition,” she says like it’s nothing, though she watches him like it’s not. “Open it. It’s yours.”

He nods mutely and peels back the paper, tugging at the tape rather than tearing it, and lifts the lid.

There’s a phone inside, the shell so glossy it could only be new. He stares at it for a few moments, doesn’t even dare to touch it, and then looks at Lilia for what he’s supposed to do next.

“But-”

“It’s yours,” she repeats, arms folded, posture rigid, defensive like she is when she doesn’t want to admit how she is feeling. “We cannot have you travelling out of the country with no way to contact anyone.”

“So it’s just for now?” he asks, and nearly sighs in relief. It’s a loan, not a gift. He can deal with that. Even if it was a gift, it would disappear the moment he took it home, stolen and taken apart for every little detail it might contain as further evidence of his deficiencies.

“It’s for as long as you need it,” Lilia replies, which doesn’t explain as much as he needs it to. “We will find a way to make it available.”

Oh. It is a gift after all.

Viktor wants to cry, wants to thank her, to hug her, but he knows Lilia wouldn’t allow any of it. She doesn’t like to acknowledge her kind heart, even when it’s there to be seen so clearly, and he respects her enough not to press on her vulnerable points. He won’t be allowed to see them again if he does.

“I can’t take it home,” he admits, running a finger along one sleek edge and pressing the power button until the screen lights up. “I wouldn’t be allowed to keep it.”

“At Yubileyny then, if it can’t go with you,” Lilia says. She makes it sound like a great inconvenience, but he knows that really she’s worried. “Make sure you can get access at all hours. Yakov will set it up.”

He opens the contacts list. Every number from his hidden sheet of paper is already programmed in.

“Yes,” he says, with a lump in his throat, blinking until the tears stop threatening. “I will.”

He doesn’t even have to ask. After leaving his phone- _his_ phone- with Lilia the night before, it is handed back to him by Yakov before training the next day, along with a key for the rink.

“The contract is set up for the year,” Yakov tells him, “and if I hear of anything happening after hours here there will be trouble.”

Viktor’s sure the only trouble will be if Yakov has to come out to get him in the middle of the night again, but he doesn’t say it. He’s more concerned about how much this cost. Anything is already too much for him.

“Don’t ask,” Yakov says before Viktor can even open his mouth. “It’s rude to ask the price of gifts.”

Yakov is not so lucky about escaping a hug. He grumbles about it all day.

Viktor wins gold with his hair loose, crowned with roses, and finds he can smile easily. A boy calls to him from the crowd and Viktor hands him a rose from his bouquet and promises to see him at Worlds. Someone did the same for him once, and more besides, almost a lifetime ago. It doesn’t hurt as much to think of Frederique now, though it isn’t painless to see the space where he could have been in the Senior division.

(Viktor doesn’t know what happened to him, if he quit, if he gave up- if he vanished- and it gnaws at him for years.)

Emptyhanded, having missed bronze by a few points and a fall on his ambitious quad toe loop, Alexei greets him with a smile that soothes away Viktor’s fears for his reaction. Alexei isn’t one for jealousy, so far at least, and takes his losses as a challenge to do better.

“Congratulations,” he says, without a trace of irony, and smiles in way that makes Viktor blush.

“And to you,” Viktor says, and hopes it doesn’t sound false with the gold around his neck.

Later, Viktor screws up his courage and asks Alexei for his number, programmes it into the phone that he won’t let his parents take from him, and basks in the way Alexei lights up at his request.

“I was beginning to wonder,” Alexei says, and doesn’t elaborate, dropping a kiss on Viktor’s cheek like it belongs there. They both know what he meant.

“It wasn’t you,” Viktor says, and doesn’t continue either. He cannot condense it all down into an easy sentence or two, a throwaway comment where his parents stopped loving him because he loved in the wrong places. He cannot verbalise the cruel simplicity of that, not yet.

“It wasn’t you,” he repeats, just to be sure, “but you are worth it.”

At some point they slip away, once Viktor has seen to his responsibilities as gold medallist and spoken to the sponsors in attendance that Yakov has been carefully placing in his way. Prize money won’t be enough for independence, he needs to work on increasing his brand and bringing in sponsorships. He doesn’t particularly enjoy it, but it is necessary, and it’s worth it when he’s done and his gruff coach pointedly tells him not to have too much fun, glancing at Alexei who is hovering inconspicuously nearby.

Their hands fit together like puzzle pieces, and the way Alexei smiles when they click into place is so infectious that Viktor has to smile too.

The rest of the night is theirs. They make the most of it.

It’s a long trip home, and even being so (relatively) close, they cannot travel together. Alexei leaves first, and while he’s waiting at the airport for his flight, Viktor dares to send a message to the number saved in his phone. He knows he won’t get a response for hours, if he gets one at all, and somehow that makes it easier.

_I miss you. See you at Worlds._

He spends the entire flight back to St Petersburg worrying about it. Has he overstepped? Did he tip his hand too soon? There’s been something (precious and fragile, that he hasn’t put a name to) between them since Ostrava, over six months ago now, but does it really mean anything? Just because Viktor puts such high value on it because of what it costs him doesn’t mean Alexei does as well, nor should he have to-

“Shut up and sleep,” Yakov grumbles beside him, without so much as opening his eyes. “I can hear your mind spinning. It’s a waste of energy.”

Viktor tries, expecting it to be a lost cause, and manages an uneasy doze for at least part of the journey. Overthinking is more exhausting than he thought.

He means to turn his phone back on while they’re waiting at the carousel, but he balks and overthinks his cowardice as the suitcases trundle past until his skate bag finally reappears. When they get in the taxi, he considers checking then, but instead leaves it in Yakov’s bag without checking. It’s better, he won’t be tempted that way.

Yakov climbs in the other side and sighs as the taxi pulls away, as heavy as if Viktor’s been disobeying him on the ice again. He probably deserves the glare he gets, but he’s not sure why yet.

“Don’t be an idiot, Vitya,” Yakov says, pressing Viktor’s phone into his hands. “You have to leave it with me if you want to keep it. If you don’t look now you’ll make that boy wait until tomorrow.”

“What if there’s no answer?” Viktor asks. He doesn’t bother asking how Yakov knew.

“Then there’s no answer,” Yakov says, like it’s just that easy. “Cry, shout, complain about it, then move on.”

“I guess…” Viktor says, eyes on his phone.

Silence settles, punctuated by the jolt of the taxi over the uneven road and the mutter of the driver’s radio. Yakov keeps looking at him and Viktor doesn’t look back, eyes fixed on the dark phone screen like that will answer anything.

“Vitya,” Yakov finally says, not exactly gentle, he’s got too many rough edges for that, but quieter. “What if there is an answer?”

Viktor doesn’t reply, but he does turn his phone on. His heart sits high in his throat as the screen lights up.

The phone buzzes once. He clicks the message before he can lose his nerve again.

_I miss you too._

He reads it again to be sure that he hasn’t misread, misunderstood, but there’s no other way to read it except as it is.

His phone buzzes in his hand, and a second message appears below the first.

_You don’t have to wait until Worlds._

Oh.

He has to hand the phone back soon enough, he can’t let his parents know, but the feeling lasts long after the message is out of sight. The words, such simple words, linger on his tongue, and he holds the warmth close behind the safety of his ribs, packed in tight beside his heart. With his hands pressed against his breastbone, he’s certain he can feel it there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay on this chapter everyone. I promise the next one will be much faster.


End file.
